Fan Mail
by Wordsplat
Summary: After saving New York from certain destruction, there was no denying the Avengers popularity. They each have their own ways of handling it. Oneshot.


The Avengers, as one might expect, were rather popular with New York after saving it from complete obliteration. Because of the completely unbelievable amount of fan mail and even gifts they received from their adoring public-a whole team of people couldn't read the amount of mail one of them alone received in a day-one of JARVIS' duties was to sort through the fan mail, both physical and over the internet, for anything any of the given recipients would actually appreciate. Each had their own tastes, mind you.

Natasha received gift after gift from her enamored fans, mostly of the romantic variety, chocolates and flowers and such, but she instructed JARVIS to trash them. She never gave any of it so much as a glance or thought. Hero worship wasn't why she did what she did, and the spy in her was uncomfortable enough with the publicity of the situation as it was.

Thor was as ambivalent about the fan mail as Natasha, though for different reasons. At first, he simply hadn't understood the concept. Clint and Tony had tried to explain, but Thor just became more confused, asking why he would waste his time in reading the mortal's worship. Clint tried to explain that perhaps 'worship' wasn't the best term, at which point Thor argued that of course it was worship, he was a god, was he not deserving of worship? Tony, being difficult as per usual, wondered aloud whether or not the term god was really applicable when he was technically just an alien, an insult Thor took quite seriously, at which point Steve of course felt the need to poke his head in and remind them all that there's only one God and he doesn't wear a cape. Of course by then all hell was ready to break loose, so Natasha stepped in and sent them all to their separate corners. Thor disregarded all his mail from then on, but really, even if he had understood the concept, his Midgardian reading skills were sub-par at best, so mail had never been a good way to keep the easily distracted god's attention in the first place.

Clint, on the other hand, loved it. Natasha teased that he just loved the attention because Hawkeye was popular with the ladies, and the ladies that knew him in real life thought he was a dork. Which was, of course, more than a little true...but didn't explain the kid's drawings of Hawkeye shooting arrows at bad guys tucked away in his nightstand's drawer.

Though Tony, like Clint, loved attention in all it's forms, he was not quite as enthusiastic as they all had thought he'd be about fan mail. It was too bad really, since he was clearly a fan favorite. Whether it was for making the biggest move in that final throwdown (as was Stark's style) or for having been around longer than the others, Tony undoubtably received the most mail-and considering the amount any of them received, that was saying something. In spite of this, Tony never really concerned himself with reading or keeping any of it, preferring instead to just to bask in the idea of it.

Steve surprised them all by declining all of his fan mail. He stayed mum on the subject when asked, but the truth of it was, it made him uncomfortable. Even back in the forties he'd been uncomfortable in the spotlight, but here it seemed worse. At least then, as enamored as his public had eventually been with him, they had some semblance of an idea that at the end of the day he was still just a person. He was real. When not of being a soldier, he spoke and dressed like any other Joe Friday off the street. Here...not so much. He still spoke in ways people hadn't for years, still had certain mannerisms and behaviors ingrained in him that were no longer practiced, and still dressed in ways very much indicative of his time and not this one. Any fan mail he received would be for Captain America, and Captain America alone; no matter how anyone tried to persuade him, he knew that to this world Steve Rogers had died 70 years ago. When he told JARVIS that he didn't want any of Captain America's fan mail, JARVIS asked, 'Any of it, master Rogers? Are you positive?' and, as Steve was alone and not in a particularly fantastic mood, he replied rather humorlessly, 'Not unless anyone ever feels like thanking Steve Rogers.' He didn't know that someone had been listening, mostly because said someone had been doing so over headphones from his lab in the basement, ten floors under Steve's location. Steve always smiles when he receives fan mail from an undisclosed source with sloppy handwriting thanking Steve Rogers for his unparalleled leadership and dedication to his country.

Bruce fumbled most with the public. He didn't like the idea of people admiring him, thought it would lead to imitation. JARVIS never gave him any mail, and Bruce liked it that way. Once and only once did JARVIS pass on a card, and though none of the other Avengers ever saw or read it, it's been one of Bruce's most precious possessions since. It was from a troubled youth in New York's juvenile hall, and the boy had laid out his soul. His whole life, he had been surrounded by people with anger issues. His mother had verbally abused him, his father physically, and as he'd grown up he'd taken it out of the people around him. While he didn't turn into a Hulk, it could get pretty bad; his brutal beating of a fellow classmate was what had landed him in juvie in the first place. He'd always felt as if he didn't have a shred of control over his anger, himself, or his life. Anger had always just been this dark, dangerous force that stole all his control. He wrote that seeing Dr. Banner take control of an anger even darker, even more dangerous than his own had given him the courage to do the same. Bruce found, met, and corresponded with the teen for years afterwards.


End file.
